This invention relates to an automatic music playing apparatus, which produces musical sounds by reading out previously stored musical sound waveform data.
There has been provided an automatic music playing apparatus, in which a plurality of musical sound waveform data are previously stored and are read out on a time division basis at successive sound generation timings of also previously stored performance pattern data.
In this prior art automatic music playing apparatus, musical sound waveform data of a timbre is processed in a channel which is allotted to this timbre. Therefore, if a command for producing a next musical sound of the same timbre is produced before the end of generation of the preceding musical sound, the preceding musical sound is interrupted, and the next musical sound immediately starts to be generated. In such a case, it is felt that an interruption of a musical sound has occurred, that is, smooth music performance can not be obtained. In addition, channels corresponding in number to the number of the timbres or stored musical sound waveform data are required for processing on the time division basis, leading to complex of circuitry and cost increase.